How to bind your quilt

Aunt Glenna had a great idea to share tips on binding for when your quilt projects are in the "thank goodness I'm almost done" stage.

She recommended this one from Heather Bailey, and just this last week I finally finished a baby quilt for a nephew who's now 7 months old, and I used the Heather Bailey one and this one from JayBird Quilts to help me figure it out.

Hope this helps!

Special Edition fabric swap!

(Just for fun, I added this picture I found on Amy Butler's website. I fell in love with that quilt! I'm excited to see all the gorgeous things that this group will make with our fabric swap charm squares!)

Okay, for the 30 of you that participated in the Amy Butler fabric swap (and thanks for being forgiving of my late notice about that...), here are the instructions:

We are calling this the Arnett Quilting Bee Reunion Quilt!

We'll each end up with over 70 charm squares (5" squares) to make something with. The only "rules" are that while we are free to add some favorite fabrics from our stash to the reunion quilt, we should try to keep our finished product around 75% made from the charm square pack that we'll receive. Is that clear as mud?

Basically, the fun is in seeing how different each of our quilts end up when we all started with almost identical groups of charm squares. Adding different fabrics to the quilt makes it unique to each of us and our own tastes, and that's fun! But adding too much makes it maybe a little too unique, and then we'll lose the commonality in all of our finished projects.

So feel free to make it your own, but for the fun of it, let's all play the game and make our very own reunion quilt! I went on flickr and searched "Amy Butler charm squares" and this is what I found. Check this out for some inspiration of what to do with your charm square pack. Also, don't forget the post on this blog showing cute projects made with charm squares. Most of the quilts have links to a tutorial on how to make it.

The most important part, of course, is to send me a picture of your finished quilt when you're done. We all want to see what you've made, and email you our "Oohs" and "Aahs".

And lastly, let's all give a big THANK YOU to the Sistahs (Donna, Glenna, Sally, and Peg) for cutting up all that fabric into charm squares. That was a big, tedious job, and we really appreciate your hard work in making this fun fabric swap happen.

Scrambled 9 Patch

Hi Everyone! Here are the instructions for the project that we started at the reunion. As you can see in this picture I stole from Aunt Glenna's fun quilting blog, this is the example we had at our quilt activity and this is a good reminder of how you'll get four blocks out of each chopped up 9 patch.

Once you have all four of your 9 patch groups sewn together and then cut into four blocks, you can sew your 16 blocks together however you want. Here's a photo group of different ways to put together your scrambled 9 patch blocks.

Don't forget! When you've finished your scrambled 9 patch project, email me a picture so I can put it on the blog! We all want to see it so we can say, "Way to go!"

Here are the instructions to help you finish your quilt:

SCRAMBLED 9 Patch

By Sally Traynor

Cutting instructions:

Do not cut the 5” charm pack

Inner border, cut 4 strips 1 inch wide x WOF

Outer border, cut 4 strips 3 inches wide x WOF

Binding, cut 4 strips 2 ½ inches wide x WOF

(WOF means "width of fabric")

Directions:

• Take the pack of 5” charm squares and divide into 4 groups of nine. Lay out a nine patch from each one. Sew each nine patch together.

Press rows 1and 3 opposite of row 2.

• With your rotary cutter, cut each 9 patch block right down the center in both directions.

See the new blocks emerging?

• You will now have 16 blocks each about 7 inches. Lay out the new blocks, 4 rows of 4, rotating so that there will not be any intersections.
• Sew the 4 blocks in each row together, press, then sew rows 1 -4 together, pressing each row.
• Add the inner border, the 1 inch strips. Press
• Add the outer border, the 3 inch strips. Press
• Layer backing, batting and quilt top. Quilt and Bind.
• Finished size is 32” x 32”